James Biela enters the courtroom after lunch Monday escorted by Washoe County deputies John Saybo, Scott Thomas and Dan Wheeler. Biela is charged in the 2008 rape and murder of Brianna Denison. / RGJ

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Just after a Reno police detective told James Biela he was a suspect in the 2008 murder of Brianna Denison, Biela called his girlfriend and set up a meeting at their home.

"He was upstairs in the bedroom, and he was pacing back and forth," Carleen Harmon testified Monday.

Biela told Harmon that she had to provide an alibi for him. In the days that followed, he began "drinking excessively," she said.

Harmon said she did not challenge his demand for an alibi, even though she couldn't provide one, and tried to calm him during that period. After he was arrested Nov. 25, 2008, she went to the police station and tried again.

"As you walked into that room, do you think he had done something then?" Deputy District Attorney Elliott Sattler asked, referring to her meeting with Biela in an interrogation room.

"No," she said.

"You were going out of your way because you still believed in him?" Sattler said.

"Yes," she said.

"Has that changed?" Sattler asked.

Biela's defense lawyer objected.

Before Judge Robert Perry could rule, Harmon answered "yes."

At the end of her testimony, the prosecution rested, and the defense began.

Biela is charged in the rape and murder of Denison in early 2008 and the sexual assault of two other women in late 2007. His trial in Washoe District Court started May 10 and is expected to go to the jury before the end of the week. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Lab criticized

The first defense witness was a DNA and paternity expert who criticized the Washoe County crime laboratory decision to use all of the swabs they collected in the case to establish DNA profiles, making it impossible to check their results.

"A better way of doing this would be to split it in half," said Roger Vincent Miller of Chromosomal Laboratories in Phoenix. "The question is was there a justification for doing this, and I'm not sure there was."

Breakdown

Biela's former girlfriend said Biela moved into her house soon after they met, and for some time, they got along "fairly good."

Harmon said she sold her house, bought a new one in Sparks and put Biela's name on the deed even though he did not contribute financially to the purchase. She also bought him a Toyota truck to help him get to work at Lake Tahoe in the winter, she said.

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And they had a child together, she said.

"When I told him I was pregnant, he said, 'Congratulations,' and when I had (the son), he was really happy," she said.

"Was he a good dad?" Sattler asked.

"Yes," Harmon said, looking down, her voice breaking.

Harmon said they had a normal sex life and that he did not show any special interest in women's underwear. She said she personally wore thong underwear, but "he never asked me specifically to wear them."

But in October 2007, things changed, she said.

"He was gone a lot," she said. "We were fighting almost every day."

Biela developed a short temper, she said, and he was "aggravated or mad a lot."

Often when they fought, Biela would leave the house and sometimes be gone for days, she said. He would tell her that he was sleeping in his truck. He also became more physically aggressive, punching holes in walls or throwing things, she said. But he never hit her, she said.

Harmon said she had followed the Denison case online. She said the only comment Biela ever made about the case was: "If (Denison) wasn't hot, nobody would care. That's why it's getting so much attention."

Biela asked to be laid off from his pipefitter's job the day the body was found but told Harmon he had been laid off. He moved to Washington state the next month, she said.

Before the move, she helped him clean out his truck and found a pair of her son's shoes. She said she threw them away. The December 2007 sexual assault victim testified earlier that she saw a child's shoe in her attacker's car.

Harmon helped Biela buy a trailer to live in while he worked in Washington. She took their son and her daughter to Washington for a two-week visit, she said, and they got along well.

Biela insisted he needed a bigger truck to pull the travel trailer and wanted to trade in his Toyota Tacoma truck. Harmon went to Washington in September 2008 to help Biela move back to Reno, she said. That's when she found the thong underwear in his truck, she said.

"The minute I got there I started searching his truck," she said. "I started suspecting he was cheating on me."

She lifted an armrest in the front seat and found two pairs of women's thong underwear, small in size and pastel in color. They were used, but clean, she said.

"What was your temperature at that point?" Sattler asked.

"I was super pissed," she said.

She called him and said, "Do you want to explain the panties I just found in your truck," and he was silent.

"I was upset," she said. "I found these panties, and now, I knew he was cheating on me."

She met him at his job site, and he was angry, she said. Harmon was yelling at him as he drove erratically, speeding.

He put his finger to his head, she said, simulating shooting himself. Then, he tossed the underwear out the window.

"Tell me where you got them," she told him. "I was going crazy the whole time. Tell me where you got these."